Thought( 1928 ). In the former, he redeployed Dunning’s conceits regarding
‘‘objective conditions’’ and ‘‘continuous growth.’’ He also proclaimed ‘‘the
fundamental problems of political thought are essentially the same as those
of two thousand years ago’’ (Gettell 1924 ,v, 5 , 494 ). In the latter, he quoted
approvingly Dunning’s view of Reconstruction as ‘‘ ‘a huge social and
political revolution under the forms of law.’ ’’ But Dunning was of greatest
interest to Gettell, as to Merriam inNew Aspects of Politics( 1925 ), because
he and colleagues at Columbia and Johns Hopkins had ‘‘laid the founda-
tions of modern methods of scientiWc political inquiry’’ (Gettell 1928 , 387 ).
This underscored the long-proclaimed identity or complementarity of the
history of political thought and political science, what George Catlin called
‘‘the rational Grand Tradition’’ and ‘‘a Science of Politics.’’ InThe Story of
the Political Philosophers( 1939 ), Catlin narratedWercely on the side of the
tradition and political science. He proceeded, he said, ‘‘full of humility’’ in
the wake of Dunning, George Sabine, and even Thomas I. Cook (whose
History of Political Philosophy( 1936 ,v)oVered ‘‘the haven of a textbook’’ to
hapless undergraduates, with chapters, like Catlin’s, adorned with photo-
graphic plates of canonical busts, making the history of political thought
appear, pictorially, as a long line of heads).
By Catlin’s time, the political locus of genre histories had shifted. Pro-
fessing objectivity or impartiality as political scientists, historians of polit-
ical thought pitched nonetheless for liberalism or some version of
democratic constitutionalism. Gettell ( 1924 , 472 – 87 , 493 ) ended his narra-
tive skeptical of ‘‘recent proletarian political theory,’’ meaning anarchism,
syndicalism, bolshevism, and national socialism. ‘‘Democracy in ultimate
control combined with eYciency in administration’’ was the future ‘‘com-
promise’’ he appeared to value. InRecent Political Thought( 1934 , v), Francis
W. Coker professed an ‘‘impartial attitude,’’ although ‘‘his own theoretical
preconceptions’’ might have ‘‘colored his critical interpretation at many
points.’’ And, sure enough, liberal democracy helped him sort arguments
of socialists, fascists, and ‘‘empirical collectivists.’’ But it was Catlin ( 1939 ,
ix, x,753V, 768 , 771 , 777 ) who was most alert to ‘‘rival philosophies of these
times’’ and narrated accordingly. He lined up the Grand Tradition of
humanist values consistent with science, inscribed in the ‘‘gnomons and
canons’’ of Plato, Aristotle, Aquinas, Erasmus, Locke, and Bentham, with
Confucius and recent thinkers like Dewey and Merriam serving as historical
bookends. A ‘‘counter-tradition’’ consisted of amoralists like Machiavelli,
the history of political thought 235